possessed by a nameless fear, and tried to think. One moment he told
himself he was a superstitious fool, and the next he pictured the cat
as an incarnation of calculated evil and malice. He had heard stories
of the dead entering the bodies of animals in order to wreak their
unholy revenge. Tales of werewolves and vampires had haunted the race
since the misty beginnings of recorded time. Why not a cat? especially
one that had been so closely allied to the dead? one that had, perhaps,
with that strange insight sometimes possessed by high-bred animals,
read his very thoughts?
He sprang up, cursing himself for a childish fool, and determined to
put the entire matter out of his mind. He prepared a warm bath, soaked
at leisure, refreshed himself with a highball and sat down to read the
paper.
By evening his spirits had improved. He ate a light but well-selected
dinner--since the death of his aunt he no longer denied himself
expensive articles of food--left a note for the woman who would come to
clean in the morning, and settled down to an evening of relaxation with
his books.
As he read however, he again found his mind wandering. He glanced up
sharply on a number of occasions, sure that he had seen a shadow move
against the wall. Once he heard, or imagined he heard, a cry just
outside the window. It sounded like the wail of a cat, but there was an
unearthly note mixed in it which lifted the hairs on the nape of his
neck. He sat rigid, bathed with perspiration, and waited for the cry
to be repeated, but the silence flowed on and at last he lay back in
his chair, weak with the strain of expectation. He told himself that
his nerves were on edge; certainly there was no reason to become upset
about a cat prowling outside. Cats prowled, especially at night. Why,
what a fool he had become!
He stirred from his chair, mixed himself a stiff drink, and resumed
his book, riveting his attention on every page. He was congratulating
himself on his success when chancing to glance up to momentarily rest
his eyes, he was terrified to see a shape of darkness dart quickly away
from the window.
For a second he sat frozen in his chair; then he hurled down the book,
rushed to the door and literally flung himself outside.
The long lawn in front of the house lay bathed in soft moonlight and
not even a wind rustled the maple leaves. The lawn and the stone walk
and the garden space against the house were entirely empty. Not a
shadow was out of place.
He stood a long time, pondering, listening, peering into the misty
veil of moonlight. Once a moth swooped into the light, causing him an
inordinate fright. At last he closed the door.
He assured himself again that his nerves were on edge; he did not feel
too well. He was beginning to imagine things. There was really nothing
to be afraid of--certainly not of a mere cat! Perhaps he needed a
vacation, a trip to the mountains, a change of scenery.
He continued to reason with himself, meanwhile occupying himself with
various tasks about the house. At length, after a careful scrutiny of
every dark corner, he retreated to his room, bolted the door, looked
under the bed and made a detailed inspection of the mesh screen on his
window. It appeared quite substantial--certainly no cat could ever
penetrate it.
Soothed by weariness and the elaborate precautions which he had
observed, he at last slid into bed and switched off the light.
He was asleep within a half hour and for some time slept soundly. Then
he began to dream. It appeared that he was hiding somewhere when a
shadowy shape of evil, an indefinable manifestation of overpowering
hate, appeared suddenly on the scene and immediately sought out his
hiding place, glaring down at him with baleful yellow eyes. He awoke
with a scream, sat up in bed, half turned toward the window--and found
himself staring straight into the luminous yellow eyes of the cat.
The beast did not offer to move. It squatted on the window ledge and
fixed its eyes on his own with unmoving intensity. For a long moment he
sat paralyzed with horror. The beast hated him; it had waited until
he was asleep, helpless, and only the wire screen had kept it from the
room. He shuddered when he thought what might have happened.
At length he managed to switch on the light, but the cat did not move
an inch. It crouched motionless on the sill outside, watching him with
cold hate in its tawny eyes.
He began to dress, slowly, keeping one eye on the cat. Further sleep
would be impossible.
When he had dressed, slipped on a warm jacket and regained full
possession of his faculties, his courage began to assert itself. He
searched the room for a weapon, finally selecting a knotty laurel-wood
cane.
The cat remained on the window ledge, watching his every move.
Taking a firm grip on the cane, he slid the bolt and stepped into the
outer hall. It did not appear at all fantastic to him that he should
dress in the middle of the night, arm himself, and creep outside to
destroy a cat.
He unlatched the rear door, slipped quickly outside, and made a run for
his bedroom window.
The cat leaped off the sill an instant ahead of his arrival, dodged the
downward sweep of the cane and ran toward the open field in the rear of
the house.
He cursed, regained his balance and whirled after it.
A low mist had risen over the meadow; it was like a curtain of
grey-white shadow in the moonlight. Momentarily he lost sight of the
beast; then he glimpsed it again, bellying its way slowly through the
wet grass. It crawled with a queer dragging of its hindquarters, as if
it had been injured, and frequently it looked back.
He took a firmer grip on the cane and rushed forward with a feeling of
exultation. His first swing of the cane must have struck it after all!
He would catch it now! He would be upon it in an instant! The sneaking,
murderous black devil--he'd pound it to a pulp! Ah, now he had it!
He swung the heavy cane with all his strength. The cat leaped nimbly
aside, ran a few yards, then stopped and turned its head, fixing its
eerie yellow eyes on him.
The sweep of his arm had caused him to lose his balance and now as he
lunged in pursuit again he lost his footing entirely; his feet shot
sideways on the slippery grass and he crashed to the ground.
He was up in an instant, cursing, frantic with rage, and sprang toward
the motionless cat.
The animal waited until he was almost upon it, then quickly dodged
aside and ran in another direction.
He was out of breath now, but it never occurred to him to abandon the
chase. He rushed after the hated black beast which ran ever ahead of
him in the swirling mist, now scarcely crawling, now darting out of
reach with the suddenness of a whiplash, now pausing and turning its
flat head to make sure he was following behind.
He leaped forward like a madman, striking out savagely with the
cane, sliding to his hands and knees, a wild frenzied figure in the
moonlight. He was possessed by the one idea; he had lost all sense of
proportion, of direction; he did not even know into which part of the
meadow he had ventured.
Suddenly the cat made a long leap. It landed heavily and appeared to go
limp. It looked back but did not move as he lunged forward.
Without warning the ground vanished beneath his feet and he plunged
downward like a stone. Even as he fell he understood the trap to which
he had been led. With demoniac cunning, the cat had caused him to run
directly over the shaft of a deep abandoned well which was located in
the rear unused portion of the meadow.
He screamed once before the black water closed over his head, sending
him straight down a pool of freezing darkness. He kicked and clawed and
at last came to the surface, but already the icy water was working its
paralysis in him.
He stared up and screamed again, but the steep walls of the well
smothered his cry; it was little more than a weak moan above the
surface of the ground.
As his wildly clutching fingers scraped in vain against the smooth
moss-slick sides of the well, he looked up with a last desperate hope
and there silhouetted above him, like a fiend from hell, was the
remorseless shape of the cat, gazing steadily downward with a glow of
triumph in its yellow eyes.
He started to scream again, but his fingers lost their frail grip on
the mossy stones and he sank out of sight beneath the surface of green
scum.
THE DUMP
Pulling aside the dingy kitchen curtain, she looked out. "It's starting
again," she said tensely.
To the north, a scant mile from the house, a great greasy billow of
black smoke rolled skyward. Squealing sea gulls flapped over huge
mounds of smouldering trash. Although she couldn't see them from the
window, the woman knew that the reeking wasteland literally crawled
with an army of voracious rats.
Somehow, the omniscient, all-encompassing State had overlooked the
dump. In its dynamic zeal to provide prefabs, food capsules and
carefully edited newstapes for all citizens, the State may have
bypassed the dump temporarily.
There was a rumor to the effect, however, that the wasteland had
been deliberately preserved as a sort of monstrous museum area, a
"See-how-things-used-to-be" tourist attraction.
In any event, in the very midst of marvels of efficiency, exactitude
and unending impersonal energy, there it remained, a sour, rat-sluiced
tract carefully shunned by the average State citizen.
If people still existed in the dump itself, or even in its immediate
environs, it was generally conceded that it was their own fault. The
State always stood ready to house and feed the indigent.
Broken springs groaned as the man arose from a cot. He shook his head.
"Wish you'd relax, Lucy. Little smoke ain't hurtin' you none."
She turned, eyes bright with anger. "_Little smoke!_" she repeated.
"Smoke that seeps right through the shingles into the house! Smoke that
gets in your lungs, in your hair, in your food, in your clothes--even
in your skin! I tell you I've had enough of smoke and cinders and
rats--and sea gulls! Sea gulls! Hah! Those dirty birds screeching like
hungry cats all the time. They're dump gulls. Garbage gulls! I'd like
to wring their filthy necks!"
Slipping into a threadbare jacket, the man started toward the kitchen
door. "You sure get worked up over nothin'. Sea gulls got to live, like
everything else."
The woman's voice rose in fury. "I suppose you'd say the rats have got
to live too! You'd even defend the rats!"
The man paused, his hand on the door knob. He looked aggrieved. "Why
that ain't fair, Lucy. We fight the rats. You know that."
"You fight them!" she mocked. "Well, let me tell you something! You're
losing the fight! The rats are winning! They're taking over! There must
be a million out there!"
The man rubbed his chin reflectively. He looked thoughtful. "They're
tough, all right. But they're under control. We club a couple hundred
to death, most every night." He opened the kitchen door.
As he stepped out, the woman's fury seemed suddenly to vanish. Her
voice was no longer shrill; it was flat, listless. "When will you be
back, Ralph?"
He shrugged. "Can't say, exactly. We might go on a rat kill. Take a
couple hours. Maybe we'll poke around for stuff till dark. Maybe just
gab over a can of mulligan." He closed the door.
From the window, she watched him cross the littered back yard and
disappear in the adjacent cattails.
Supper time came and went and he had not returned. She had a cup of tea
and a biscuit and then sat up, trying to read, but found herself unable
to concentrate. Finally she crossed to the kitchen window.
Darkness had fallen, but the Enemy was still visible, revealed in the
lurid flickering light of towering trash fires. At night the dump
seemed even more forbidding. You never knew what that flame-riven
darkness might conceal.
As she stood at the window, she imagined that the approaches to Hell
itself might resemble the scene before her--fires circling the night
and beyond in the deeper darkness terrors and frights unspeakable.
At last, wearily, she undressed for bed. But she did not sleep
peacefully. This evening the nightmare came swiftly. There were
variations, but the essential outline was nearly always the same.
From the outside darkness, from above and below and from all sides,
came subdued but ominous whispers of sound--gnawing, scraping,
squeaking, scuttling. And then the house began to settle, literally
to sink, like a ship in the sea. The busy rats had eaten away its
foundations and now it was being engulfed in great tides of trash.
The dump was closing in on it, like a monstrous growth. Soon it would
disappear out of sight in the slimy darkness. As it slipped into the
sour earth, the rats broke through. They poured through the windows,
the doors, down the chimney--huge, hairy creatures with red eyes and
yellow flashing fangs. They leaped upon the bed, lunged for her throat.
She was sitting up in bed, screaming, bathed in sweat, when she finally
awoke.
Ralph had not yet returned. She got up, drank tea, and went back to bed
for a few minutes' fitful sleep in the hour or two before dawn.
She was sitting in the kitchen when Ralph returned. Grey light was
filtering over the cattails. In the distance a sea gull squealed.
Ralph yawned, stretched, sat down. "Quite a night. We musta clubbed a
hundred rats. Maybe more. Jim Tavey got nipped, but not bad. When we
got back, Fred Morgee's woman had a pail of the best damned mulligan I
ever ate. Hot and spicy! Jeepers, that was good!"
She glared at him. "That filthy woman! Living in the dump! Bad enough
to live next to it."
He spread his hands. "Why Lucy, it ain't bad. Morgee's rigged up a
shack with a real tin roof. Got a floor and a potbelly. Got bunks.
Sheila Morgee's the happiest female I ever did see."
She slammed her fist on the table top. "Well she can have her filthy
shack in the dump! _I'm_ through! Living here right on the edge is
getting just as bad as being inside. Cinders, smoke, smells, sea
gulls--and rats, rats, rats!" Her voice rose hysterically.
He spoke soothingly. "What can we do, Lucy? Twenty years ago we paid
ten thousand for this place. Now the State wouldn't give us over three.
How long would that last? In a year or so we'd be wards. Broke. The
State would take us."
"What's so bad about that?" she countered. "We'd have two rooms in
a plastic prefab. Plenty of food capsules. An entertaintime screen.
Now they even give you the choice of a permajade juniper bush or a
simulated maple tree for the lawn."
He snorted. "Lawn! Artificial grass you spray green in the spring and
brown in the autumn!"
Her voice rose again. "That's better than looking out at those dingy
cattails all day long--watching them shake as the rats swim around the
roots!"
He was silent.
She continued, her voice weary but resolute. "I'm through, Ralph. I
can't stand those nightmares no more. If you won't sell to the State,
I'll bring suit for my share and I'll leave anyway. I'm not going on
living like this."
He shook his head, frowning. "I won't fight, Lucy, if you really want
to go. You can keep what the State gives for the house. But I'm telling
you, it's a mistake. We ain't got much here, but at least we're alive."
Her voice was bitter. "I've had enough. I'm selling. If you won't come,
go and live with the rats in the dump!"
He went to bed. He knew that further argument would be futile. A few
weeks later the man from the State came. Ralph had already signed the
papers, waiving his share of the proceeds from the sale of the house.
The State had agreed to pay twenty-seven hundred.
Sitting down in the one stable armchair remaining in the living room,
the State man--a Mr. Feckwith--opened his document case. "All that
remains," he explained to Mrs. Leeson, "is for you to sign these
papers." He passed them over to her.
As she read, a look of consternation spread on her careworn face. "What
does this mean? Don't I get the twenty-seven hundred?"
Mr. Feckwith coughed politely. "Well, you see, Mrs. Leeson, before you
can become a State ward and qualify for a prefab, plus furnishings and
food, you have to turn all assets over to the State. Otherwise you are
not considered, ah, dependent."
She hesitated. "But I--I won't have a penny!"
Mr. Feckwith smiled reassuringly. His chubby face beamed. "You
won't _require_ a penny, Mrs. Leeson! All needs are taken care of.
Shelter, food, clothes, medicine. And you'll have all the extras--an
entertaintime screen, the news tape delivered every day, the monthly
excursion. Think of it!"
She thought of it. She thought of it while black soot drifted past the
windows, while the sea gulls squealed and the dump fires flared. She
thought of it and she signed.
Three days later the State sent a tronicar to pick her up. She was glad
that Ralph was away. It made things easier.
As the car sped off, she turned for a last sight of the dump. A huge
pall of thick smoke hung over the area. Tireless sea gulls flapped
above the refuse heaps, screeching raucously. Sighing with relief, she
looked away, concentrating on the tronicar's gleaming interior. Within
seconds the dump was far behind her.
Her new life was like a dream. She had two private rooms in a plastic
prefab, complete with entertaintime screen, newstape projector and
remote music disc. Food, mostly in capsule form, was delivered daily.
The trugrass lawn, freshly sprayed, boasted a simulated maple tree over
eight feet high.
If she felt ill, all she needed to do was press the button marked
"Dispensary." A State doctor would arrive in three minutes.
Sitting in her foamease chair, in front of the entertaintime screen,
she reveled in her new luxury. No dump smoke seeped into these rooms.
No soot drifted past the windows. When she looked out, instead of
dingy cattails she saw the bright green simulated maple tree and the
sparkling trugrass lawn. No more rats scampering across her back yard.
No noisy sea gulls circling overhead.
She felt sorry for Ralph. He would probably die in the dump. He'd end
his days in some dirty shack, slurping up mulligan stew. He'd die
alone, some dismal night, while the dump fires flickered and the filthy
rats squealed and scuttled in the darkness.
After the first week she got to know some of her new neighbors. There
were twenty-nine other units on her block, each with its own trugrass
lawn. Some, like hers, boasted a simulated maple tree. Others were
graced with one of the permajade juniper bushes. She was welcomed
warmly. They were all very friendly, all very polite. She never
mentioned the dump. They talked about the past as if it were life
on another planet. They talked about their favorite programs on the
entertaintime screen, about where they had gone on the monthly tronicar
excursions sponsored by the State. They talked about their illnesses.
And yet, it seemed to Lucy Leeson, they did not actually talk very
much. Perhaps it was too much effort. Mostly they just sat in front of
their entertaintime screens and watched. Most of their meals they could
swallow in capsule form without even moving from their foamease chairs.
The weeks came and went and finally a man appeared one morning and
sprayed the trugrass lawn a uniform brown. A week or so later he came
back, worked a mechanism at the base of the simulated maple tree and
all the bright green leaves curled up tight and invisible against the
limbs. It was autumn.
The man told her they had tried leaving everything green all year
round, but in the long run the people didn't approve of it. They liked
to look out, some fine spring morning, and see the trugrass lawn and
the maple trees unexpectedly green again. The service men came just
before dawn to spray the lawns and unfold the maple leaves.
It was a landscaping marvel. The grass never had to be cut and Lucy
knew that the simulated maple tree would never be over eight feet tall.
No pruning, no troublesome roots, no falling leaves to rake.
Her only criticism was that the birds seemed to avoid both lawn and
tree. She looked out, rather wistfully, in hopes of seeing a bird.
But she rarely saw one. She remembered with a pang of nostalgia the
red-winged blackbirds which descended on the cattails bordering the
dump every spring. They were such bright, frolicsome, saucy creatures!
But they never flew over the trugrass lawns.
After a while, Lucy stopped visiting her neighbors. For some reason
which she could not specifically name, they depressed her. They were
old and listless and often ill, but it was more than that.
At length she knew the reason. They were dead; they were corpses
waiting for interment. They would be transferred from the plastic
prefabs to State permaplastic coffins with scarcely a groan of protest.
They were just waiting for death, day after day. Consciously, they
swallowed their capsules, read their daily newstapes and sat with
their eyes riveted on the screens. But subconsciously they had stopped
living. Subconsciously they longed for death to release them from the
bondage of State security, State brainwashing, the bland and eternal
aura of State assurance and reassurance.
She began to feel that she was being smothered to death in the plastic
prefab. She grew to loathe the food capsules. The endless entertaintime
programs finally filled her with boredom. The newstapes were some
diversion but she resented them because she sensed that all the news
had been too carefully sifted and predigested beforehand.
She stared out at the meek leafless tree and hated it. Sometimes she
sat on the floor because she was so tired of the foamease chair. Once
she pressed the "Dispensary" button just to see what would happen,
but she never tried it again because she was subjected to a tedious
two-hour examination which left her exhausted and taut with irritation.
The examination was thorough but so impersonal she was left feeling
like an inanimate object.
She no longer had nightmares about the dump rats but now a new and
even more terrifying dream haunted her sleep. She dreamed that the
State, unable to supply prefabs fast enough to meet the thousands of
new applicants, secretly filled some of the food capsules with sleeping
powders. The sleeping victims, chosen at random, were then carried out
of their quarters, slipped into State permaplastic coffins and quietly
buried. In her dream the plastic prefab became a permaplastic coffin.
Doped with sleeping powder, she was buried alive. She would wake up,
night after night, screaming, throwing her arms in the air to claw her
way out.
At length she began to sit up most of the night; during the day she
would sleep at frequent intervals in the foamease chair. This routine
effectively ended the dream of being buried alive, but she still
dreaded the nights.
She would sit for hours thinking about the dump--the sea gulls
squealing, the trash fires flaring, soot flying past the windows and
finally Ralph tramping in with his crazy stories about the rats or the
mulligan stew or the fortune someone had found in a discarded fruit jar.
She had hated it all before but now she wasn't sure she hated it very
much. Maybe she no longer hated it at all. What was it Ralph had said?
How did it go? Oh yes: "We ain't got much here, _but at least we're
alive_."
The words echoed in her mind. She thought of them a hundred times a day.
It was a small thing that decided her. One morning she was standing
at the window, looking out across the trugrass lawn, when a State
dispensary ambucar drove up. Two hospital men entered the prefab across
the road. In a few minutes they came out carrying old Miss Quinsonby in
a plastic bag.
Lucy Leeson felt sick. Although she was perfectly aware that Miss
Quinsonby had been ailing for months, the memory of her nightmare
came back to torment her. Was it possible that the State actually did
"dispose" of the very old and infirm in order to make room for new
applicants? The thought was fantastic, and yet the State people were so
deadly, impersonally efficient in so many ways....
That very afternoon she signed up for the next monthly tronicar
excursion. She had nearly two weeks to wait and she counted the days.
One afternoon when she was sleeping in the foamease chair she had a new
nightmare. She dreamed that she became ill and pressed the Dispensary
button. In the prescribed three minutes two State hospital men
appeared. One of them winked at the other and they both smiled slyly at
her. Then she noticed that the one who had winked held something behind
his back. It was a big folded plastic bag. She awoke with a scream.